Cookie tracking is a popular method to track web visitors who linked to a commercial website and made a purchase. Cookies allow a web merchant to track from where such visitors linked to the merchant's site, and pay out a referring commission to the host of the originating website.
To implement cookie tracking, a third-party affiliate software program is installed as a stand-alone product requiring minimal changes to the website that will include the referring links. The affiliate software places links to the commercial sites on the hosting website. When a web visitor clicks an affiliate link, the affiliate tracking software is activated. The affiliate tracking software instructs the web visitor's browser to write a small text file or “cookie” to the web visitor's computer. This cookie stores the affiliate identifier of the hosting website. It may also store other information such as the date/time for purposes of tracking how much time elapsed between the click and a resulting purchase. It may also track the specific banner or link that the web visitor clicked. The cookie is also typically assigned an expiration date.
After the cookie is planted, the web visitor is redirected to the webpage that is the target of the specific banner or link that was clicked. This could be, for example, the homepage of the merchant's web site, or a′ webpage with specific information concerning a product of interest to the visitor.
As the web visitor traverses the merchant's site, the cookie remains untouched and continues to hold the affiliate identifier. The cookie is retained until the expiration date, as defined by the affiliate tracking software. This allows merchants to track purchases even if they occur days or weeks after the first visit. Merchants can also track repeat sales from visitors. So long as a sale occurs before the cookie expires, the sale will be properly credited to the referring affiliate, by the use of the affiliate identifier.
Cookies make tracking affiliate-referred-sales very convenient. A cookie can be read and used on any webpage or form, and can be used in conjunction with almost any ordering system. Affiliate web marketing is discussed in greater detail in The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 Last Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online by Rosalind Gardner, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants by Shawn Collins, The Complete Guide to Associate & Affiliate Programs on the Net: Turning Clicks Into Cash by Daniel Gray and Proven Tactics in Affiliate Marketing: 8 Case Studies by MarketingSherpa.
Adware (sometimes called spyware or thiefware) is sometimes configured to illegitimately claim affiliate commissions, even when it had no involvement in bringing the user to the respective merchant. Such adware typically attempts to plant its own affiliate identifier in cookies, regardless of via what path the visitor linked to the merchant's website. In case of browser based adware, a common scenario is that responsive to a user clicking on a product link, the adware will popup a dual frame window and/or various other browser frames. The main frame may display a product competing with the product on whose link the user had clicked. Alternatively, two frames may simultaneously display websites of the product on whose link the user clicked and the competing product. The secondary frame(s) may be almost invisible, e.g., 0.1 pixel width, off-screen, hung browser instances, blank browsers, etc. Regardless, the adware, via one or more of its browser instances, sets the last affiliate identifier of any updated cookie to its own. In fact, in some cases the various invisible browser instances set the affiliate identifiers of any cookies they can find, on the basis of keywords, etc. Because the last set affiliate identifier determines who gets credit for the sale, the adware ensures that no matter which product the user buys, the adware vendor receives the commission.
Some adware bypasses the process described above and instead monitors cookies directly, to make sure that their own affiliate identifier is the last one set therein. Whenever such adware detects a cookie being created or updated, it adds its own affiliate identifier at the end.
What is needed are methods, systems and computer readable media for preventing fraudulent misdirection of affiliate program cookie tracking.